


Weather continues very fine

by redletters



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-22
Updated: 2008-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redletters/pseuds/redletters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The return of Arabella Strange to London in the late summer of 1817, in the company of the Greysteels and half a squadron of Irish dragoons, was greeted with more disappointment than relief, or even pleasure, from the fashionable world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weather continues very fine

**Author's Note:**

> Note after the Open Doors Yuletide import in 2014: This is a very old fic that I'm too embarrassed to reread. If you're reading it, best of luck and I hope it isn't too terrible!
> 
> Written for Mercurie.

 

 

The return of Arabella Strange to London in the late summer of 1817, in the company of the Greysteels and half a squadron of Irish dragoons, was greeted with more disappointment than relief, or even pleasure, from the fashionable world. Here was proof that Mr Strange was no uxoricide at all, but a mad magician of a more remote and incomprehensible sort; for Impenetrable Darknesses were all very well for picture-books and German fairy tales, but they were nothing in London circles to a villainous domestic drama. 

Furthermore, Mrs Strange's presence in society was hardly so enlivening as to console for the loss of so excellent a piece of gossip. After many exertions on her behalf by Sir Walter Pole, she had been installed on a widow's pension, and took small but respectable rooms in Kensington.(1) There, far from taking up her former duties as one of Westminster's favourite hostesses, she fell incomprehensibly into the habit of not being at home when well-wishers and old friends called, and rarely left the borough herself. When she did show herself, she was neither tragically sorrowful and disconsolate (as befitted a recent widow, even if widowhood were not, strictly speaking, her situation) nor sparkling, cheerful and adventurous (as befitted a wife whose husband was away on business, magical or not). Rather, Mrs Strange was polite and reserved; not unfriendly, but no longer the scintillating hostess of the days when the healths of her husband and Wellington were on the lips of every true-born Englishman. No one save Lady Pole and the Greysteels saw her more than twice in the long autumn months; and she had fallen into her husband's old habit of looking wistfully at bookshelves while others were speaking to her. 

Society's general disappointment with the magical widow continued through November, when Miss Wellspring pointed out to Lady Harcourt at the Admiralty ball that simply because Mrs Strange was alive and well _now_ did not necessarily mean she had been so for the past five years. As Miss Wellspring was in the process of becoming affianced to Captain Hadley-Bright, well-known as one of Strange's closest associates during the war on the Continent, her thoughts on the matter were afforded grave consideration by Lady Harcourt, who resolved to call on Mrs Strange that week. 

To her surprize, Mrs Strange was at home, and the two ladies spent a pleasant afternoon while Lady Harcourt described the latest Parliament acquaintances and scandals; and Lady Harcourt left with the firm conviction that other callers who had been turned away merely lacked persistence. Furthermore, she had spied in Mrs Strange's drawing-room an engraving of Mr Strange which faced a mirror, rather than out to the room, so one could only see its reflection unless they stood very close to the wall: this no doubt had some _Magical_ significance, which Lady Harcourt was quick to confide to Miss Wellspring. 

Arabella had dinner with the Greysteels that evening, and over the course of apple-cake said, "I know you believe that more company may bring me to my old spirits again, Dr Greysteel, but if they are all like Lady Harcourt I shall be more low than otherwise; and anyway, I am sure I am now as close to my old spirits as I will be, at least until – for some time." Dr Greysteel was dismayed that his advice had no effect, but said he believed he understood, and Flora was quick to ask the table servant to bring a glass of Mrs Strange's favourite Rioja. 

Yet once it became known that Mrs Strange was once more receiving callers, a brook of friends and strangers began trickling into the Kensington house, so that Arabella was obliged to make her apologies to the Greysteels and the Poles at least once a week. 

The first augur of Arabella's newfound popularity was a short, slight man, all in grey, with wispy dark hair, who resembled a thin plume of peppered smoke. He presented his regards to Mrs Strange, and apologised for arriving without an introduction. He was, he said, a magician with information vital to her husband's recovery, and his name was Dr Ignatius Palmer. Dr Palmer showed Arabella a map of Faerie he had drawn with his own hand, based on the configuration of the King's Roads outside his own hometown in Twickenham. He believed he had identified the location of the Great Darkness within Faerie and that it would be no more than a day's journey either way to ride in, fetch Mr Strange, and return to England in triumph. Arabella thanked him for his journey, but told him she did not believe his efforts would be successful; for Mr Strange had been on the King's Roads but once, and they were too dangerous to venture without more magical protection than a map and a horse. 

Dr Palmer looked as if he would like to protest, but Arabella looked sharply at him, and he bowed and left the map with her maid.

The second came two days later in the form of Mrs Auravale, a literary widow of Dr Greysteel's age, who had heard the voices of men arguing outside her window at night. She believed them to belong to Mr Strange and Mr Norrell. "It is very dark outside my window, you know, especially in the evening; there is a great deal of shade on the west side of the house," she told Arabella in a low voice. "If, indeed, the Darkness which surrounds them has crept into Hampstead Heath, surely it can only be a matter of lowering a corded ladder, which Mr Norrell can then climb up - and Mr Strange, of course." Arabella's smile grew thinner, and she did not press Mrs Auravale to call again. 

The next week, while Arabella and Lady Pole walked along the river, stopping to gaze out toward Battersea, an older gentleman with a silver-topped walking stick enquired whether she was the magician's wife. Lady Pole flushed and opened her mouth, but Arabella gave her friend a quelling look and said that she was; and who was he? The gentleman did not give his name, but announced that he was London's finest theoretical magician; he had been studying magic from the best books since the fairy roads opened, and that although he disapproved of the wanton disregard Mr Strange had shewn for the geography of England, he believed he could be of assistance in fetching back both her husband and the illustrious Mr Norrell, who would be able to set his pupil's misconduct right. Arabella and Lady Pole were obliged to leave off their admiration of St Mary's Church and continue on their way toward the Royal Hospital to avoid his continued conversation, although Lady Pole did not leave off angrily abusing his rudeness, bearing and the appearance of his person for the best part of an hour. 

\------

In early December, Arabella entered a china-shop on Jermyn Street, intent on finding an afternoon service to replace the set which had been lost, along with her other household possessions, with the house on Soho-square. She was examining a particularly fine set painted with ivy leaves and forget-me-nots when she became aware of a young woman approaching her breathlessly. Arabella turned, expecting Flora Greysteel, but was instead faced with a tall, fine-shouldered woman whose pale blue morning dress did not quite suit her coal-black hair and bright, dark eyes. 

"Mrs Strange," the woman began. "I must beg your pardon, for I know we have not been properly introduced – I am but newly arrived in London – but I am a close friend of Mr Segundus, and I believe I saw you at the Pole's ball on All Souls Eve and, I pray you–"

"Oh, enough!" Arabella cried. "I know well enough what you are going to say. You are a magician, and you are going to offer your services to free my husband and Mr Norrell from the Darkness – either after damning Mr Norrell for his cowardly acts and praising my husband for his bravery, wisdom and fearlessness, or offering a patronising reminder that moderation is necessary in all things, including magic. I have had enough of your Strangeites and Norrellites, and I am sure our friend Mr Segundus agrees with me, for all his bibliographing(2). I must believe that Jonathan is doing the best he can, and I cannot think the efforts of any _new_ magician will do anything to help him and Mr Norrell, and may rather make their situation worse."

"I believe you mistake me, Mrs Strange," the young woman said, looking down on her folded hands; her cheeks were faintly colored. "I am sorry to hear our faction has caused you any trouble, for although I am proud to call myself a Johannite, I should never dream of causing you the slightest distress. I have merely come to ask if you will join my uncle's household for a ball on Twelfth Night. I have sent invitations to all the other guests, but, ah, the address Mr Segundus has given me – on Soho-square–" She stopped, with a look that said she was sure she had overstepped herself but was not certain how, or where. "My name is Georgiana Redruth," she said after a moment.

"Oh!" Arabella said, a little ashamed at her outburst, and suddenly sympathetic to Miss Redruth's plight. "I quite understand. One is never certain how to observe the demands of etiquette when one is continually at the mercy of the vicissitudes of magic." She laughed. "Why, I remember once when Jonathan and I were attending a dinner-party at a house the carriage-driver did not know; when Jonathan attempted to find the place using a roadside puddle, he ended up bringing the road itself–" She realised the china-shop owner and his customers were trying and failing to look as though they were not eavesdropping, and shook her head. "I thank you for your offer and will be pleased to accept; you may send an invitation to my house on Cadogan Street. I shall give directions if you need them," she added hastily.

"Oh, every magician of any name knows it well," Miss Redruth said.

"Ah," Arabella said, and bade Miss Redruth farewell with a frown. 

\------

Though she was unable to persuade Lady Pole into accompanying her to any parties, no matter how small or how close the friend, Arabella told herself she must not take against her friend for being unanxious to fly into the open arms of society. Had not Lady Pole spent many more years dancing in those gloomy halls of Lost-hope than she herself, and had she not many more acquaintances of name to speak poorly of her after her long illness? It was pleasing enough to see her chatting with her husband and his friends over dinner or tea; balls were too much to ask.

Still, it was with a sigh that she allowed the coachman to hand her into the Greysteel's carriage; for Flora had received an invitation as well, and they were to be escorted by Captain O'Malley, whose acquaintance they had made in Padua. As Arabella predicted, the two talked of nothing but the past week's Royal Hospital Ball for the entirety of the ride to Mayfair, and once they disembarked at Colonel Redruth's small house on Curzon Street and were announced, they made rapidly toward the punch bowl together and left Arabella to sit and examine the room, alone. 

It was an attractive house, if not spacious, and Arabella noted many new fashionable touches that were clearly the result of Miss Redruth's recent arrival in the household. The small works of magic must have been the lady's handiwork as well, for Colonel Redruth had insisted strongly that he had no truck with magic, only plain, honest soldiering, no offense intended. Arabella recognised many of the lighting spells from the days when she and Jonathan would hold dinner parties for their friends in Parliament and the Admiralty – although, as a servant rushed forward with a bowl to catch the dripping wax from a candle suspended in midair, the containment was not so precise as her husband's. She looked around, wondering if there were another amateur magician to whom she might make small suggestions to prevent any guests' clothing being ruined or hair inadvertently distressed, when the servant tending to the candles caught her eye. 

It was Mr Norrell's man, Childermass. 

His look of surprise must have mirrored her own, for he dipped a finger in the melted candlewax(3), gestured, and suddenly was an old stooped footman with a bristling salt-and-pepper beard.

"Oh!" Arabella said, and looked around. No one else appeared to have noticed a thing. She looked back to the servant who had been Childermass, but he was gone. She was about to make after him when Miss Redruth appeared at her shoulder, followed by John Segundus, who bore three glasses of punch and a dazed expression. Whether his look was due to the magic that had just been done or the style in which Miss Redruth's holly-green dress draped about her shoulders, Arabella did not know; but she greeted him warmly and was glad to accept a drink, for it was suddenly quite warm in the room. 

"How long has Colonel Redruth been in London?" she said. "Has he found many new servants? I ask as I have yet to find a suitable maid for my own rooms, and if he has any leads or advice–"

"Oh, no, my uncle has not had a new man for years and years," Miss Redruth said with a throaty laugh. "I believe most of them are almost as old as this house, but it is no use enquiring after London servants, for they are all Yorkshiremen, through and through."

Mr Segundus gave Arabella a curious look, but said, "Miss Redruth has just been telling me of her family's history. Apparently her father counts the Absaloms as relatives on the mother's side." He lowered his voice gently, and Miss Redruth drew in close. "I recall meeting Miss Absalom with your husband nearly ten years ago."

"I believe she may be the magician my husband most admires, after John Uskglass, of course," Arabella said. Miss Redruth gave an involuntary squeak of excitement, and immediately reddened. Arabella continued, "He often spoke to me about the affinity he felt for lady magicians, who he believed to have a more organic understanding of the art of magic than gentlemen. He wrote as much in his book, I remember, or said he would, but of course–" She broke off as she saw Childermass again, across the room and making for the side stairway. "I beg your pardon," she said. She was aware that Jonathan's state provided more of an excuse for her rudeness than she could otherwise make, and for once was glad of it. "I am not well, and am going to sit by myself on the balcony."

As she left them, Arabella heard Mr Segundus say urgently to Miss Redruth, "Indeed, when we first met Mr Strange was most insistent that a magical lady...."

\------

Arabella followed Childermass up two flights of stairs and down several hallways, nearly tripping over her ballgown, for he was more than a head and a half taller than she, and his pace was quick. She was able to keep up with him only because he stopped to fling open every closed door he found, and stare into the room for a moment before shutting it again. Finally he found one that seemed to suit him, and entered it, and Arabella followed, putting out a hand to stop him closing the door.

"Childermass!" she said. He turned awkwardly around, looking about him for another door to escape through, but there was none in the room. Arabella continued, "What are you doing here? What services can Mr Norrell possibly require from within the Darkness?"

"I am no longer in Norrell's employ," Childermass said in a too-loud voice, "and this place is brimming with magic! Can you not feel it? I can; I have come here to seek out its source." 

Arabella shook her head. "Not I," she said. "I am afraid I have no feeling for the stuff at all." Childermass raised his eyes heavenward and shrugged at one of the armchairs. "Oh!" Arabella said, for there was a strange ragged man she did not recognise sitting cross-legged in it, watching her curiously if indifferently. Childermass, meanwhile, determined that she was not about to leave, closed the library door. He went to one of the cabinets and stared searchingly at the lock, and after a moment its door sprang open.

Immediately Arabella was struck with the sound of music, the same music she had heard every night for those long years in Lost-hope: a dreary, low flute and viol. Her heart began to pound in her throat, and Childermass, seeing her expression, came to her and lifted her hands to the side of her head. Arabella noticed white wax balls protruding from his ears, and clapped her hands to her own fiercely. It was no good; the music crept in through her fingers, and she began to see visions. 

She stood on a high sea-promontory, and a great obelisk travelled quickly across the ocean to meet her; as it neared, she realised it was not an obelisk at all, but the familiar pillar of Darkness which ensconced her husband and Mr Norrell. It stopped before her and she saw Jonathan step, tall and handsome, onto the craggy rocks; he was surefooted and stately, while Mr Norrell scrabbled in the pebbles behind him. Jonathan turned and sneered at his old master, and the wind blew in his hair. The scene shifted, and she and Jonathan were seated at a high table in Whitehall, wearing cloth-of-gold, and the Prince of Wales and Napoleon fought to bow at her left hand. Arabella saw herself mother of a small, bright child, with her eyes and Jonathan's mouth, who had the power to create and destroy worlds with a sweep of his hands, and she was horrified. She shut her eyes tightly and tried to picture Jonathan as she best remembered him: not at a ball or dinner or even in their old household together, but before they were married, when he told her sheepishly that he had bought three spells for seven shillings and sixpence, and was going to be a magician.

The music stopped as if a door had been shut upon it. Arabella opened her eyes and saw Childermass and the ragged man sprawled on the library carpet. To her surprise, she was on the floor with them, and her limbs were slow and unsteady in rising. Childermass was embracing a flowerpot and had evidently been sick in it; the other man, in contrast, was propped on his elbows and laughing hoarsely. 

"Won't try that again, will he?" he said in an East London voice. 

Childermass coughed, and took a grimy handkerchief from his pocket and began wiping his face with it. Arabella wordlessly handed him a clean one. "There must be a protection-spell on the books in this library, shielding them from magical influence," he said, uncertainly. "As you're a book..."

The other man smiled smugly. 

"Who has done this?" Arabella said. "They showed me horrible nightmares-- Jonathan changed into a dreadful politician, and him and me with not a true friend between us."

Childermass held up a shard of a shattered vase, which she or he must have knocked off during their visions. "It still jars me," he said, "even broken. _Who is the magician of this house?_ "

The door began to shake, and before Arabella could shield or cross herself, the lock broke and three people burst into the room: a servant with an iron crowbar, Mr Segundus and Miss Redruth. Miss Redruth wielded a candelabra, and Mr Segundus held a heavy-looking book with gold-leaf lettering in both hands. 

"Oh! Thank goodness you are all right," Miss Redruth said. "You were gone for an hour, and Mr Segundus and I both felt strong magic from this room – John better than myself." She looked distastefully at Childermass and Vinculus and said, "Are you fairies? You have ruined my uncle's birthday gift from Sir Walter Pole, whoever you are."(4)

"We are not fairies," Childermass said, standing slowly and exhaling. "I am John Childermass, my companion is simply Vinculus, and although he may not be the strictest Christian, he does have a soul, as far as I have been able to tell."

Vinculus swept himself up and bowed low over Miss Redruth's hand. "Of course we are men!" he said, looking broadly irritated at Childermass. "And my companion – servant, I should say, he follows me around and looks after me – is mistaken; I am the most observant Christian you will ever find. I apologise for intruding on your household, and for putting you to the trouble of breaking down your own door; we are – I am – magical scholars, of a sort, and we could not but conclude that there was something unusual about this place." 

Childermass gritted his teeth through this, but did not contradict anything Vinculus said. Addressing Miss Redruth, he said, "Your uncle is a magician, is he not?"

"Indeed no," Miss Redruth said, lowering the candelabra and becoming animated. "My brothers and sisters are, every one, but we are the first generation of our family to take up the art. We studied all the usual texts that were available, as well as as much of Strange's _History and Practice_ as we could before it disappeared." Vinculus stared thoughtfully at her, and she returned his gaze with a reflexive disdainfulness, until she caught sight of his exposed throat. "Those letters!" she said. "Oh, how did you learn them?"

Arabella and Mr Segundus frowned; Childermass sucked in a sharp breath. "What letters, miss?" he said carefully. 

"Those your friend has painted on his throat," Miss Redruth said. "I recognise them -- nursery letters, we used to call them. My governess used to read to me from a book with ones just like it, although she left off when my brothers and I were old enough for tutors. I have not seen them in years! I did not know anyone else knew them; I thought she had invented them just for us. How did you come to wear them so?"

Vinculus, who was openly admiring Miss Redruth's figure, began to speak, but Childermass interrupted him. "Your governess, was she a Northerner like yourself?" he pressed. "What did she look like?"

"I suppose she was one of our people," Miss Redruth said, seemingly forgetting she was in London, and that Arabella and Vinculus were in the room. "I never thought of it. She was tall, and wide-eyed, and older; although I seem to remember shocking red hair." She frowned, thoughtful, and laughed. "How strange on it! I cannot remember her name. I shall ask my father."(5)

Mr Segundus looked struck. Childermass looked at Vinculus, who shrugged, and returned to his appraisal of Miss Redruth. Seeing that he would receive no help from his companion, Childermass began haltingly to describe what he knew of the King's Book, its making, what it had foreseen already, its recent transformation, and what a capable reader might mean for the state of English magic. Miss Redruth grew agitated as he spoke, going so far as to clasp Mr Segundus' hand. 

"The prophecies of the Raven King! Why, I can certainly read them!" she exclaimed, and stood as if she were ready to uncover the future of England there and then in her uncle's library. "That is, I believe I can. I may go slowly, and I must have ink and paper to write each line, or I will forget it. It is not so easy at Latin or French, I remember. Where is the book?"

Stammering, Childermass insisted it was inappropriate for a young lady, especially an unmarried one, to study magic at all. Did she not mention brothers? Could any of them read the King's Letters?

"They are in Yorkshire, and anyway they are younger than me, and will not remember so well," Miss Redruth said fiercely. "But sir, magical detective or no, how dare you imply that women are in any way less capable of learning magic than men? Why, Mrs Strange's own husband preferred–" She stopped, for Vinculus had undone his neckcloth entirely, and bared his upper chest to her with a cheerful half-toothed grin. 

Miss Redruth started, and faintly said that she now understood Childermass's objection. 

Arabella felt this was no sort of coversation to hold without stronger fortification, especially after being possessed so badly by an unknown magic, and she told the servant to fetch them a bottle of Madeira-wine. The music was gone from her head, and all she heard was a brisk galliard from the musicians downstairs. She sat and listened to the budding argument between Mr Segundus (suddenly possessed of the firm conviction that young ladies ought to be kept inside and away from all magic and magicians until they were married or past thirty or both), Childermass (passionately championing the King's Letters, the King's Book, and above all the Raven King himself), and Miss Redruth (unclear of her own opinion on the present matter but nevertheless indignant on the behalf of lady magicians everywhere). Vinculus scratched his nose, examined his fingers, and offered unsolicited opinions on the merits of chaperones. 

When the servant arrived with Madeira-wine, Arabella took a glass and excused herself to return downstairs, although none of them acknowledged her departure. 

"Magicians!" she thought fondly to herself as she reentered the ballroom; and then, "At least this will keep them occupied among themselves for some time, and leave Emma and I to ourselves." The band was still playing their galliard, and she tapped her foot. 

"Bella!" Flora rushed up to her, breathless and high-colored. "Oh, Bella, you would not believe! Captain O'Malley has left, but he did not dance with a single other girl all night, and he tells me that on the morning he intends to speak to my father – of course, perhaps it is not so very good a match, and Papa will refuse – he is Irish, you know, I mean Brendan, not Papa, and a captain's half-pay is not so very much to live on, but just think, Mrs Flora O'Malley–" She stopped. "That is not so very good," she said in confusion. 

"No indeed," Arabella said, and smiling, she settled into a loveseat to sip her wine and discuss what was to be done about Flora's fiance's unfortunate last name. 

(1) On Mrs Strange's arrival in London, she ordered a hansom-cab and went directly to Soho-square in the company of Miss Flora Greysteel. Mrs Strange was seen to start toward her former residence (which had, by all accounts in the society papers, disappeared several weeks previous) before stamping her foot and crying, "Now, really, John, this is too much!" As she was not usually given to public displays of bad temper, Miss Greysteel was dismayed, and searched her memory for some magical explanation of the house's absence from the street; but Mrs Strange quickly composed herself and returned to the cab, where she spent several minutes in silence before speaking animatedly of her favourite rose-coloured afternoon dress, which had been left in her upstairs armoire. (2) John Segundus' Life of Jonathan Strange, although not published until 1820, was begun in 1816 after consultation with Mrs Strange. (3) Wax is understood to be one of the best components of any simple guising spell, as its pliable nature is easily communicated. Ormskirk wrote extensively on the benefits of pure beeswax, coming straight from the hive with no previous impressions of form to confuse the spell; Dr Martin Pale is thought to have preferred the melted wax of white candles. (4) Examination of shards of Colonel Redruth's vase found it to be from the Tang dynasty, laid with Imperial jade and painted with dragon's tears. Sir Walter Pole related that he had found it in Stephen Black's room, where he thought Stephen must have taken it to clean; but Sir Walter could not recall when or where, exactly, he had acquired such a precious artefact, and he presumed it must have come from Lady Pole's family, although he had never seen it before. It was clearly ridiculous that a servant should own so valuable an artwork himself, even a servant so good as Stephen. (5) Like most magicians, Maria Absalom ventured on many mysterious journeys during her lifetime; according to the diary of her lady's-maid she once vanished for seven years, appearing in the tall window in the front hall on Midsummer's Night each year. 

 


End file.
